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First, I must admit that I am not an Italian cinema specialist. Especially the neo realism one. This movie - the first of the film maker Giuseppe De Santis - describes very well the terrific situation that many populations knew all over Europe, just after WW2. This takes place in Italy, of course, and this hopeless tale shows us the homeless, poor people: men, women and children who had to struggle every day to survive, hanging along the roads. The lead is in charge of an important amount of money, the community's payroll - the only they have saved after the war disaster - and the dol is stolen after a violent robbery. Our hero knows the chief of the robbers, and he can't speak afterwards because the leader of the hoods took his wife as hostage.

Yes, it is a solid and very pessimistic drama, describing the state of mind, and not only mind, in which all these poor people had to live with. I know there were many of this kind of features, in this same period, from Italy. But I don't know them enough to speak further about this.

This extraordinary first feature of Giuseppe de Santis deserves to be far better known and has probably been lost in the plethora of post-war neo-realist films that followed the seminal 'Obsession' and the visceral 'Rome, Open City'. It has a rawness and immediacy which is overpowering thanks to Otello Martelli's images and Mario Serandrei's editing. It concerns the theft of money destined for an agricultural collective by a band of Fascist collaborators. The peasants themselves decide to track them down and the hunt is on..... The cast plays with utter conviction notably Massimo Girotti, Carla del Poggio, Andrea Checchi and Vivi Gioi. The part of the collaborator who develops a conscience is probably Checchi's best while Vivi Gioi deservedly picked up a 'Nastro d'Argento' for her phenomenal performance as 'Lili Marlene'. This film bears the hallmarks of a fine director who was to give us 'Bitter Rice' two years later.